Did you know that yoga can support us to change our habits, even when we’re not in yoga class? This past month I’ve been sharing ways that our yoga practice can give us insights into our habits, and support us to make changes.
Directing Attention
Firstly, it’s important to bring a kind and gentle attention to our existing habits. When your teacher guides you to move into a particular asana or pose, you’re immediately given an opportunity to examine your usual postural habits and movements, perhaps your breathing habits too.
The space that a yoga class gives you from ‘normal life’ is a time to notice and become aware of your habitual ways of being. This can be practice for bringing gentle awareness to your habits off the mat and is an important starting stage before trying to change anything.
Developing self-acceptance
The second way yoga can help is through developing self acceptance and self-love. I encourage my students (and you!) to approach habit change from the perspective of improving your life, NOT you. I happen to know that you are already completely wonderful as you are, and habit change is much easier from a place of love, than shame.
You could frame your desired habit change as a way to bring greater ease and joy into your life, rather than correcting perceived wrongness in yourself. Yoga gives us the space to imagine a different way of experiencing life and help us to feel motivated to make the change.
Discipline
Finally, we can consider discipline, which is one of the niyama* from yoga philosophy known as tapas. The word implies heat, the heat of friction as we do something differently to the way we usually do. Again we are practising this on the mat by placing our feet and moving in a particular way, or focusing and channelling our breath in pranayama (breathwork).
At the end of each class, I ask students to notice what they’ve achieved in terms of feeling better. I do it myself too of course! This reminds us that we have the power to change how we feel and the ability do things differently.
*“Niyamas are five attitudes presented by Patanjali to free us from unhelpful habits and guide us to greater independence and peace of mind.” from Embodying the Yoga Sutra by Ranju Roy & David Charlton
I hope this has given you some insight into how yoga does more than make us flexible. I’d love to know what you thought of these ideas. Please comment below!
